Very Cool!!!

i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

Brilliant and touching

Beautiful, moving film.

Never have I seen such a topic on-reel. And Majid Majidi does it with finesse, cooked up with traces of sentiments and etching up emotions into a beautiful layer of life lesson.The Willow Tree talks about a taciturn, blind professor and his lives, before and after a surgery that changes his life forever. Before, he is calm and loving. He loves his family & work. Then comes life values and when God puts him on test, things go pumping and wrecking. What brought luck to him, snatches all his glorious memories and turns him into something he never thought he'd become.The plot goes heavy on the darker and duller side towards the end, depicting how life can turn upside down, if we slip the path once. Chiefly, it talks about the dangers of life that we want or never ever dreamed of. Lots of thing depicted, lots of things to learn, this film is a perfect blend of life and interpretation. It cannot be debated as to why the divine power creates things as they are and this story gives us a promising insight. Cast is so beautifully active, the message is brightly conveyed. Music is very good.BOTTOM LINE: Majidi is a master and as like all his films, this one is another feather in his hat.Profanity/Vulgarity/Sex/Porn: No | Violence: Mediocre | Gore/Alcohol/Smoking: No | Gore: Mediocre

A blind Iranian professor is sent to France to get an operation for a small tumor under his eye. Fortunately, it turns out to be benign and the doctors are surprised to see that in addition to removing the tumor, they think they might be able to restore his sight---which he lost when he was 8 years-old! When he returns home, he can see and is met by a huge group of people who welcome him and celebrate his new sight. Despite being a relatively small scene, it is one of the more touching I have ever seen. You can't help but feel wonderful for the man and seeing his crying at the reception is a terrific scene. I was impressed by the actor, Parviz Parastui, in how he handled this scene...with only uttering a single word. It's a fabulous scene--and worth seeing the movie just for this--however, there is still an hour left in the film at this point. Interestingly, however, what happens next was totally unexpected. It seems that making the transition to his old life is NOT as easy as it initially seemed. See the film yourself to see what I mean.Like other Majidi films, this one has a lovely directorial touch to it. Great cinematography, fitting and evocative music and a focus on simple folks--all what I've come to expect from his films. While this film is not one of my favorites Majidi films like COLOR OF PARADISE and CHILDREN OF HEAVEN, it is so completely original and heart-felt that I strongly suggest you see it--even though it is not one of his "feel good" films when all is said and done.This is an interesting topic for director Majid Majidi. That's because although he's only made a few full-length films, this is the second one he made where the leading character is blind (the other being the amazing must-see film, THE COLOR OF PARADISE). Because this is a familiar theme, I'd love to know if this is a topic that is near to him--perhaps he has a blind family member or friend--though neither his web site nor IMDb could shed any light on this for me. If you have any idea why he came back to this topic, I'd love to know.UPDATE: Since I first reviewed the film, I have found myself recommending it so many times and thinking about it so much that my original score of 8 seems low, and have recently changed the rating to 9. Well worth seeing.

Cinema began as a purely visual medium. The shock and fright that the Lumière brothers caused in their virgin audience came about because seeing the world through the lens of a camera is like seeing for the first time—witness Dziga Vertov's 1929 paean to the new medium, Man With a Movie Camera, and you get a sense of this fascination. Thus, film is perfectly suited to director Majid Majidi's exploration in The Willow Tree of a blind man regaining his sight. After a quietly foreboding passage of voice-over, the movie opens its eyes on a scene of sylvan innocence, with a father and his young daughter racing sticks down a stream. We soon learn that the father, Youssef, a university professor, is blind. At home, his wife, Roya, sits and translates pages of texts into Braille for him. When he sits down to read them in his courtyard, a sudden gust of wind blows them away and Roya has to scramble across the garden to retrieve them, while Youssef grasps desperately at whatever he can feel near him. He is cared for, he is loved, and loves in return but we are given a sense of his dependence, his powerlessness in the face of nature's occasional rushes. Having flown to Paris to treat a possible cancer under his eye, he undergoes a cornea transplant that should restore his sight, which he lost when he was 8 years old. In a tremulously powerful section of the movie, Youssef impatiently peels back the padding around his eyes to the shocking sensation of light. Still with the carefully lifted feet of a blind man, he pads excitedly into the hospital corridor as a single tear of blood falls from his still- scarred eyes. It is a moment of subtle horror—after all, a new sense is terrifying. The Willow Tree is unrelenting cinema. It challenges our notion of perception and gives us the visceral rush of seeing as though for the first time. When Youssef returns to Iran he is greeted by a crowd of family and friends. In a scene that will stay with me for a very long time, the soundtrack drops away as Youssef looks at these faces without recognition—which one is Roya? Is it the beautiful young woman with the video camera? Youssef hopes so. And there is the tragedy—with all this renewed sensation, the reference points of the past need to be realigned, the world which satisfies the other senses might not satisfy the eyes, and in that moment at the airport, Majidi brings to bear both the revelatory joy of the new and the plummeting realisation of how much was lacking before. As Youssef, Parviz Parastui is astonishing. It is his performance, as well as that of Afarin Obeisi as his mother, that lifts The Willow Tree above anyone reproaching it with sentimentality. It is a deeply religious film, in the best sense of the word—a moral fable that is not moralistic.

I saw this at the 2005 TIFF to a packed audience.This was an eye-opening movie in a couple ways.Not only is this drama about a blind Iranian man who unexpectedly comes upon sight during a routine eye operation in Paris, but it opened my eyes to the value of sight in life.The main character in this movie has been living life without sight for 38 years, so much so that we see the habits, the challenges, the braille reading, and the support his friends and family give him and which he is subtly dependent upon. Yet when this miraculous chance to see gives him, shall we say, a second chance, what does he do with it? In fact what would anyone do with it? What I liked most about this was that the challenge posed to the lead character and the choices he made were so very real with the challenges and dilemma of his choices and frustration clear. This made me consider the choices *I* have been making in life. If I were given a second chance with anything, what would *I* do with it? This was a thought-provoking movie that took me into a world I have never experienced. And while I have seen movies about blind people, this movie really seemed to capture the view of life from this particular blind man: his challenges; his decisions; and most importantly, his emotional state.This is a smart and very real movie that was moving, thought-provoking. Visually speaking, the weaving of light with dark scenes allows the story to further come to life giving a final illumination on a story that shares, sympathizes and delivers.This is a well-done piece of work! Congratulations!